While free job ads have undoubted appeal, the enduring success of a jobs website lies in how well it can target, and then actually reach, all of the potential job market.  That includes those hard to reach people who didn’t even know they wanted to move.

 

When it comes to online job boards, while ‘targeted and specialised’ is usually better than ‘big and general’ it’s still not enough to achieve recruitment potential. That’s the view of Paul Humberstone, general manager, recruitment services at The Intermedia Group’s new career site - jobla.

 

Like most new markets, says Mr Humberstone, the online jobs board market started out in a very general way and has evolved into highly specialised niche products, better able to target particular industries or professional groups.

 

“When we saw the first online job boards launched many years ago, they were very broad products where you would have retail sales positions or telemarketing jobs being advertised alongside positions for chief scientists and web programmers,” he said.

 

“There are still plenty of those general online job boards around but the real growth has been in niche job boards where advertisers can target their message to the specific group of people they are interested in. And job seekers can hone in on their target employer group.”

 

According to Mr Humberstone, the biggest challenge is reaching ‘passive’ job seekers – those people not actively looking to change jobs but whose interest might be sparked by coming across a job advertisement in the course of their business day.

 

Even with a niche online job board for a particular sector or professional group, it’s up to the job seeker to actually go to the site and register with it to receive job alerts – so the traffic is very much ‘active’ job seekers.

 

“The model we have adopted with jobla goes one step further.” He said.

 

“The online job targeted to a specific industry and linked to thousands of mostly middle and senior level people who actively subscribe to an e-news service about their sector or field of interest and expertise.

 

“For example, Government News has a huge e-news subscriber base of people right across the federal, state, local government and non-profit organisations.

 

“The government section of the jobla site is connected to the magazine’s website and also appears on GN’s twice weekly e-newsletters.”

 

As a launch initiative, all jobla advertisements are being offered free until December 31st 2011.